HER-o, the journey back(wards)

Directly influenced by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's incredible 'rePLAY: a symphony of heroes', which you must see if you're a gamer and bear any love for their original scores. This is a timestamp and a personal reminder of a story that came to me when my in-flight entertainment unit broke and started playing 'the Hobbit' no matter how much I button-mashed to back out (I like the choice of outing myself as a Tolkien fan, that's all I ask, Air NZ). Not all stories, when told, start at the beginning. There is not always a prophecy, but sometimes a promise. Not all survivors are heroes, and not all heroes write history.

HER-o, the journey back(wards)

Did you hear about the hero (we pronounce it 'HER-o') on their way home?

She woke under the stone in the pit of an old civilisation, in the well of their tombs at high tide of summer.

She was homeward bound, they say, the one who saved us all

most of us

only the best of us, sour minds contend.

She didn't begin alone, you understand. So few heroes do.

There was a tailor, a grocer, a prince and a legend.

There was no prophecy, for what are those but a delirious promise of the world's turning? When the great devourer first arrived, hunger festered in the people, and they looked ahead, confiding hope in the shadows. Their prayers rose to an oath that, one day, this too would pass.

A tailor who armoured their bodies and minds, knitting the worst of their injury.

A grocer who nourished their strength and spirit by any means possible.

A prince taught them honour by his own clamber to find it again.

And a legend reminded them how survival meant relearning the virtue of patience, and victory was daring to hope.

These journeys change us, remaking the people we could have been.

Did you hear about the HER-o, the one who fired a cannon on the graves of an old world? Did you hear the echo, like thunder, when the skies bore its wounds? Were you close enough to feel the earth groan when the devourer fell to the knives of bedrock?

Some say he was thrown to the sun; others claim he escaped to perch on the border of night on the moon; he climbed the towers of the Zenorae, rode the clouds to refuge and hides between the pulse of stars until his strength has returned.

Well, if he does, I've heard a HER-o was born among you.

And I hear she's coming home.

9 March 2014